They say all good things come at a price. And as many of us would agree, the price for holiday family reunions, rich with warm feelings and great food, are the inevitable questions concerning why you are single.

Considering the upcoming Thanksgiving break, now is the time to prepare for such questions.

They come out of nowhere, often with no warning. Perhaps your aunt has you cornered in the kitchen, brandishing knives and personal inquiries.

Or maybe its grandma, in the bedroom with the, “Are you still dating that one person?”

Maybe it’s your own mother wanting a detailed timeline on when she can expect grandchildren.

Regardless of the setting, the results are inevitable and uncomfortable. But you are not alone. 

According to real-life scientists at James Madison University, approximately two-thirds of college students in the U.S. identified their relationship status as “single” this year.

That means this holiday season, out of the 21 million college students in the U.S. (as estimated by the National Center for Education Statistics) there are a projected 14 million awkward conversations concerning relationship statuses just waiting to occur.

An additional difficulty in responding appropriately lies within the evolution of traditional courtship. While in grandma’s day extensive traditional rituals had to take place before two individuals could start “going steady,” current research points to the idea that today’s youth consider dating to be a much more causal game.

Increasing numbers of studies have found the idea of conventional dating to oftentimes be forgone in favor of the far more casual “hooking up.” In fact, psychologists at James Madison University found that on average, college students tend to hook up twice as much as they date.

Hooking up, or “short-term mating” as defined by people who clearly have never participated in the activity, constitutes a significant portion of the current college dating scene. While this may not be news to us, how exactly does one go about explaining this all to grandma?

Short answer: You don’t.

Not to encourage lying to your beloved relatives, but in all honesty it can be safely and scientifically assumed that they don’t really want to know.

Despite their constant inquisitions, they have no real interest in hearing the intimacies of your life. They are just confused, scared and have no idea what else to ask you.

Relatives are like spiders. They may look all big and scary and have a tendency to keep showing up all up in your business, but if you buckle down, roll up the paper and actually hit them with the news, they will die.

You tell them the truth, and they will just shrivel up with their nosey selves and die with embarrassment, right there on the spot.

No one wants to see that.

So why do they keep asking?

You see, you came back from college this giant terrifyingly-real person, and frankly they just don’t really know how else to interact with you.

So they default on weirdly intrusive questions that they don’t really want to know the answer to.

They don’t.

They just want to know when they can expect to receive a crisp perforated invitation in the mail, requesting their attendance at your impending nuptials.